Users increasingly access and read electronic books (“eBooks”) using a wide variety of eBook readers, including dedicated reader devices and specialized applications or functionality installed on other devices such as smartphones, personal digital assistants (PDAs), portable media players, desktop computers, portable computers, tablet computers, and so forth. These devices often have network connectivity, either wired or wireless, allowing them to remotely access and retrieve electronic content from online sources such as electronic book sellers and websites. Content items corresponding to written physical media, such as books and magazines, are available in this manner for consumption by users of eBook readers.
In addition to viewing published content items, users would often like to use their eBook readers for reviewing other types of materials. For example, users might create or receive documents on their computers, and may wish to peruse such documents using their eBook readers. In some cases, this can be done by first converting the documents to an eBook-compatible format, and then copying the converted documents to an eBook reader. Converted documents can be copied by connecting the eBook reader to a computer and using computer-specific commands to transfer the documents from the computer to the eBook reader. In addition, some systems allow a user to email an appropriately formatted document to a special email address hosted by a server, to be subsequently downloaded from the server to the user's eBook reader. Although this allows users to view their own documents on their eBook readers, it can be a time-consuming process.